PACKS Share New Single "Abalone"
It's been a productive 18 months for PACKS, the Toronto/Ottawa band lead by the songwriter Madeline Link. The band released one of the more celebrated debuts of the pandemic with their album Take The Cake, which was released in 2021. That album earned praise from The FADER who compared their "reluctantly anthemic slacker rock" to Pavement and Speedy Ortiz, alongside accolades from Stereogum, Exclaim, So Young, NPR, NYLON, BrooklynVegan, Gorilla vs Bear, Paste, NME, and Bandcamp, who called the LP "the sound of classic indie rock as delivered by a promising new voice." The album's release propelled the band into a year of touring which saw them going on long runs in the US with bands like Polyvinyl signees Good Morning, and like-mined Fire Talk label mates Wombo & Mamalarky, before returning to release their WOAH EP a little less than a year after the release of their first album in July of this year.
Today, PACKS are back with a final 2021 release, a new single called "Abalone" + much more inn store for 2023, listen, watch, follow & stay tuned!
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Toronto’s PACKS make music that’s like leafing through a diary entry of a time without visible movement, a subtle beauty that appears only when paying close attention. The band’s debut is a collection of songs that marry the loose but incisive jangle of early Pavement with the barbed sweetness of Sebadoh and the wide-eyed wonder of the first Shins LP. Written in two different settings, between the city limits of Toronto where Link was living in 2019, and the Ottawa suburbs where she was quarantined with her parents in the spring 2020, both remain complementary emblems of self-reflection and wry observation of the mundanity of daily life. "Take the Cake" is out on Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper, Mamalarky) on May 21st digitally and July 9th 2021 on vinyl.
1st Pressing
Cake Splatter Vinyl - 300 Copies
Black Vinyl - 400 Copies
Additional Variants
Light Blue Indie Retail Exclusive - 300 Copies
Bright Red Rough Trade Exclusive - 100 Copies
WOAH is the new EP by PACKS, available digitally on Fire Talk and Royal Mountain. The Toronto-based band’s “scruffy and bright lo-fi indie rock that sounds just as joyously off-the-cuff” (Nylon) also garnered praise from the likes of NME, Stereogum, FADER, Line of Best Fit and more, with Bandcamp calling debut record ‘Take the Cake’ “the sound of classic indie rock, as delivered by a promising new voice.” Fresh off supporting Good Morning on their full US tour, ‘WOAH’ sees Madeline Link refine her voice in this solo project that features some of her most inventive songwriting to date. Strategically sparse, these eight new songs accommodate another side of Link’s prolific creativity, with nuanced acoustic guitar and lyrics that puncture in their stark realism.
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